APM - Application Portfolio Management
APM helps IT managers to make better decisions about
application changes,
competence needs and other productivity issues.
APM is based on a set of metrics from different tools that
system developers use
in their daily work:
| Tool |
Description |
Metric |
| Errand
and Workflow Management |
This type
of tool handles the workflow for a project or a software maintenance team. It is a list of change
requests, questions and to-dos. This tool is used to keep track of who do
what when and how much time is spent on each task.
Small teams might be managed in Excel
documents, larger teams and departments have customed applications or purchased tools
to manage the workflow.
|
What
metric is available depends on tool and extent of use. Here are some key
metrics of interest:
- Errands for change per
application over time
- Time spent (cost) per errand
and application over time
|
| Application
Mining |
See What
is it? |
If the
Application Mining tool has an open database that allows writing own
reports or programs, there is a lot of metrics to get. Here are
some key metrics of interest:
- Function Points per application
over time, for example Mark II
Function Points (ISO20968)
- Complexity per application
over time, for example
McCabe Complexity Measure. |
The function of the APM tool is to retrieve the metrics
and show them to IT managers in
different views. The views together is the APM Dashboard.
It is possible to create a basic APM tool in Excel and use some VBA-macros to
retrieve
the metrics from your Errand and Workflow Management tool and from the
Application
Mining tool. ResourceMiner has an open database that can be accessed from within
Excel
or any program of choice.
Version 2.2 and later of ResourceMiner includes SQL
Reports for Complexity metrics and
different kinds of LOC-measurements.
Here are som links to help developing
own Function Points reports:
Function Points Analysis - IFPUG
(ISO 20926)
Function Points Analysis - NESMA
(ISO 24570)
Mark II Function Points
(ISO 20968)
COSMIC Full Function Points (ISO 19761)
Your APM Dashboard should be able to answer those
questions:
- Do we (over time) increase or decrease our
productivity - all over and per managed object?
(Productivity is cost divided with amount of changed/added/deleted LOC,
SLOC or FP)
- Do we (over time) increase or decrease the
complexity - all over and per managed object?
- What Applications/Objects need most activitiy?
(Actions taken on this can be rewriting this part of the application
to save time on upcoming changes)
The most costly applications should have highest
complexity or the highest change frequency.
APM can take you up to level 5 in the CMM model.
There are solutions for Function Points reporting and APM but not published as a part in the latest
version of ResourceMiner. Licensed users are welcome to request for more information about this topic.
| 
